Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/50

 Under Governor King the Female Orphan School was founded, and the first issue of copper coin took place. The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, the first Australian paper, was founded by a prisoner, George Howe, and published by authority in 1803. An insurrection of prisoners, two hundred and fifty strong, armed with muskets, broke out at Castlehill, on the 4th March, 1804, and was defeated in fifteen minutes by Major Johnstone, of the New South Wales Corps, with twenty-four men. Sixty-seven insurgents fell on the field; ten were tried and five hung.

A penal settlement was formed in Van Diemen's Land by Captain Collins. In the first instance he proceeded to Port Phillip, hut unfortunately landed on the eastern arm, where there was a deficiency of water; and being, as most military men are, a bad colonist, he abandoned it and proceeded to the Derwent. Had he made his way to the Yarra Yarra River the probability is that Sydney would have become the second settlement; and, with the profusion of white slave labour then available applied on the fine agricultural land of Port Phillip, by this time a population of several millions would have been established there.

1806 was signalised by the great flood on the River Hawkesbury, on the banks of which the principal grain cultivation of the colony was carried on. The Hawkesbury, in ordinary periods, winds in a strangely tortuous course through a deep valley, between the precipitous banks above which, on the occurrence of heavy rains, it rises as much as thirty feet in a very few hours. These floods are not periodical. Until 1806 none of importance had occurred, and people had settled down on the rich "interval" land, the deposit of former overflowings. Crops, houses, and many colonists, were all swept away in one night. Famine was the immediate result. The two-pound loaf rose to 5s.; wheat fetched 80s. a bushel, and every vegetable in proportion. A serious flood had occurred in 1801, but this far exceeded it. It is difficult to teach caution in such matters.

This great flood on the Hawkesbury caused eventually a complete rearrangement of the cultivation and occupation of that district.

Calamities, according to popular prejudice, seldom come single. It was certainly the casein New South Wales in 1806, for the clock-tower fell, and Governor Bligh arrived. Captain King resigned his command on the 13th of March.

RECOLLECTIONS OF PRISONERS. On the Hawkesbury and its tributaries the first successful agricultural